


A Glooming Peace

by Arya_Greenleaf



Series: Just the Scraps [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
Genre: Body Horror, Clothed Sex, Evil Wins, Force Healing, Frottage, Identity, Injury, M/M, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Resurrection, Reunions, Roughness, Slow Burn, Temporary Character Death, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:08:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26524225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arya_Greenleaf/pseuds/Arya_Greenleaf
Summary: Kylo reaches out with a shaking hand and brushes his fingertips across Hux’s sternum. He’s shocked. Amazed at what he’s done -- the cost of it all but forgotten when he touches Hux’s warm skin. He’s done this. Kylo, the Master of Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order. The path he must follow from here to Exegol, to Palpatine, to freedom seems entirely clear now. Like it has been lit by millions of tiny, bioluminescent creatures that will shepherd him toward the end of it.NOTE: Please mind the tags. If you don't mind being spoiled, there are explanations in the endnotes.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Series: Just the Scraps [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1912891
Comments: 8
Kudos: 119
Collections: Kylux Is Dead: Long Live Kylux





	A Glooming Peace

**Author's Note:**

> Very spoilery warnings on character death & gore/body horror in the endnotes. I've tried to tag in a way that will give those who don't want to be spoiled an idea of what will happen without being too obvious. These things as presented in the text are, in the author's opinion, more poetic/visceral than directly gory.
> 
> This story was written as an extension of ["Pale Flag"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26325382) but can be read on its own with only a few vague points. If you read that piece, you already know what the CD refers to. This story is essentially: What happened to Kylo on Kef Bir and why was he so spooky when he got back to the Order?

Palpatine wants the girl to believe she’s _someone_ . It’s essential to his scheme, the process of breaking down her sense of identity. She had become comfortable in the skin of _No One_ , she had embraced it. She had found some semblance of a family, cobbled together from a network of smugglers and traitors and rebels. So the breakdown, the shattering of her selfhood -- it was important.

Kylo Ren knew this process intimately, violently.

Ben Organa had slowly come to accept that he was Prince of Nothing. He would inherit no real title, no real power. He would never tap into the extraordinary legacy of his bloodline. He would make himself happy by floating fruit from the branches of the trees he climbed in Mon Mothma’s gardens and pretend that he didn’t know in his bones that he was meant for more.

But, Palpatine -- he knew it was Palpatine now, that whole time -- had picked at it. Peeled the layers of his contentment back until everything was raw and angry.

He’d done the same thing over and _over_. Lies upon lies, promises that one’s deepest fears could be abated, that fate could be changed -- all the while steering his mark toward the destruction that they came on their knees before him begging to be saved from.

Now he was doing it to the girl.

_Rey Palpatine_.

It was such an extraordinary lie. It was too outrageous to be real and too outrageous to be fabricated. The doubt and the clarity all rolled into a roiling, disaffirming mess. The girl had no one to tell her to fight it, that she was still herself. Not that having those things had helped Ben in the end. Palpatine was well versed in this particular maneuver.

Kylo Ren had arrived on Kef Bir with the intention to kill the scavenger. But as he watched her expression twist with anguished rage while she demanded that he hand over the wayfinder, he thought he might be able to use it. Maybe, he could stoke that fire. She’d refused to take his hand, but maybe -- _maybe_ \-- all he had to do was light the match and walk away.

“Look at yourself,” he says to her softly. “You wanted to prove to _my mother_ that you were a Jedi.” She breathes heavily, bobbing forward and falling back on her heels, drunk with fury. “But you’ve proven something else.”

_That’s it_ , Kylo thinks. The pathetic, weak threads that she has felted together have all been so easily undone. Han Solo. Skywalker. Now Leia. She’s a scavenger of bonds, stealing parts and trying to make them fit together like round gears grinding against flat housings. She won’t earn any portions for these, not when the scrapped heap of a body she’d stolen them from had been reclaimed.

“You can’t go back to her now,” he reasons. The calm he feels is overwhelming, but it doesn’t stop the words from sticking in his throat. “Like I can’t.”

“Give it to me,” the scavenger spits through gritted teeth. She’s teetering on the edge. All she needs is a little push.

Kylo crushes the wayfinder in his hand. The ancient glass and brittle, weather beaten steel crumble like a stack of the tuile cookies he made himself sick on as a child. It’s a satisfying crunch. The sharp edges make musical sounds as they hit the floor.

The scavenger’s delicate control shatters. _Good_ , Kylo thinks. He can fuel this, he can use it. He can wear her down. He launches himself into defense, keeping her following him -- keeping her moving. She rushes at him again and again, swinging her blade -- the blade that is rightfully _his_ \-- with murderous intent.

She’s easy to keep at bay. She’s too focused and it works against her. She’s beating herself into exhaustion and burning through her anger faster than she can manifest it. She’s a forest fire contained in a body. The problem with a fire is, although it’s destructive -- it sheds a tremendous amount of light. 

The traitor, _FN-2187_ , shouts through the storm and the waves crashing all around. Kylo can feel his presence even if he can’t quite make out his shape through all of the heavy atmosphere. The girl turns and the shift in her energy is like the sudden opening of an airlock. _No!_ she screams, and throws all of that rage toward the sound of Eight-Seven’s voice -- it’s rage, it’s _powered_ by rage, but the rage isn’t for him. She is angry at him, annoyed, frustrated that he won’t simply let her throw herself fully into the fight -- that he insists she relies on the people around her for help when she just wants to use all of her power and _do it_. But, she wants to protect him. That’s there too, insulated by all of that hurt and confusion and fury like it’s under an inversion layer.

She strikes and she strikes and she’s clearly been training -- building her stamina and learning how to control the weight of the blade and the balance gravitational force of its power. All of her training only goes so far. She’s tired. Exhaustion is melting the outrage from her expression and making her limbs begin to droop. She swings and it's sloppy -- an opportunity to push her toward the slippery ground Kylo’s gained over her.

The scavenger looks no more than a lost, frightened girl and Kylo knows then she’s too weak. She can’t help him destroy Palpatine. She can’t help him destroy whatever else is waiting on Exegol. There’s Darkness in her, but it will never be sufficiently self sustaining. What good is a top that stops spinning?

Kylo lifts his saber and lets it start to fall. She should be grateful, he thinks, this is a more merciful end than Palpatine would have granted her.

Very suddenly -- all at once -- Kylo’s mind is bleach-bright with sharp Light. Every miniscule corner of his head is scoured and it _hurts_.

_Ben_.

The soft whisper floods the empty spaces where Darkness had so recently lived. He’s filled with the warmth of the sun during the Chandrillan summer -- the sticky, sugary juice of berries nicked from carefully manicured bushes -- the luxurious softness of being cocooned in a massive, hand-knit blanket -- the scent of his mother’s perfume when he’d buried his face in her freshly brushed hair, clinging to her while she hoisted him off the ground to swing around her her arms.

Kylo’s hands forget their purpose. He is trapped in this stark, Light place -- a prisoner in his own brain, the rest of his body utterly unfeeling.

All of it rushes back just as quickly as it was chased away. He’s filled up again with all of his careful anger, all of his terrible desire and -- _heat_. His nerves come alive with fiery, immediate pain and he looks down to find his own blade buried in his gut.

The scavenger’s face is blank and distant. _Leia_ , she breathes. She feels it happen, she feels the gaping maw left in the fabric of the Force when somewhere -- far, far away -- Ben Organa’s mother blinks out of existence.

The saber buzzing in Kylo’s gut shifts with the scavenger’s distracted distress and in an instant he finds his chest won’t fill and his legs are like phantoms beneath him. The strength of the blade is the only thing that is keeping him upright and when she disengages it, he falls.

The scavenger towers over him, bright white against the rusted out hull all around them and the grey-green storm in the water and the sky. Her grief presses down on him, forcing the little volume left in his lungs out until he is sputtering and gasping uselessly. Something shifts in her and Kylo feels too tuned-in with her presence flattening him against the weathered steel. The ocean spills upward and over the edge of the wreckage like the moon itself is trying to warn her off of whatever she is about to do. Her grief, her desperate sadness is overwhelming and Kylo wishes his brain would just succumb to the deprivation of his collapsed lungs so that he doesn’t have to feel it.

The scavenger studies him for a moment and her hands dance tentatively from the space in the air just in front of him toward herself and back again. Kylo is confused and annoyed -- he has far greater things to worry about than this wretched girl’s feelings. There is the _Steadfast_ and his crew and his Knights and there is Exegol and there is --

Her hand is so light when it touches his chest and he hates her for her gentleness. Why does she have to bother? Why can’t she just leave him to die?

The scavenger’s face screws up in frustrated concentration. She’s trying to do _something_ and Kylo can’t parse out what it is. He’s not sure he cares. He’s not interested in her sentimental nonsense. She’s babbling something about his mother and his father and his uncle in desperate burbling sounds.

All Kylo can think of is how everything has slipped through his fingers. Pryde has probably seized control of the _Steadfast_ and begun issuing orders to the fleet. He can’t even begin to wonder what has become of Hux. The last Kylo had understood, the General was carrying out their ongoing operation to undermine Pryde -- the real traitor, reporting on their movements to Palpatine and stealing from the Order -- all of their carefully laid plans might not be for naught if Hux manages to survive.

The threads of his thoughts begin to unwind and his mind is just a haze of disorganized memory. Scents and sensations, light and shadow. Everything crashes into everything else and the scavenger is nothing more than a blurred image on a damaged holoscreen.

Eventually -- everything is just _gone_.

It might be a thousand years and it might be just a second that it lasts, but the feeling of being enveloped in sheer _nothingness_ is all encompassing and… _liberating_ . Kylo Ren -- Ben Organa -- the nameless apprentice beaten down by master after master -- none of them ever had the pleasure of experiencing _nothing_. Of not being pressed in on from every conceivable angle by the Force. Of trying to wrangle it in whatever way someone else wanted him to wrangle it -- of trying to deny it in whatever way someone else wanted him to deny it.

Kylo -- the entity that used to be Kylo -- thinks that he is dead, but he’s not entirely sure. Should he still be so very _conscious_ if he is dead? Is this what it is like to be sublimated into the Force? To become one with it? He had heard stories as a child, the kind of thing parents told their children to make them behave, about Dark Force users and how they had no hope of becoming a part of the stars because they had extinguished the Light inside of themselves so willingly. But the Force is neither Dark nor Light. The Force doesn’t care how you used it. It simply exists.

It was.

It is.

It will be.

Suddenly, the roar of the ocean and the storm fills Kylo’s head again. He wants to blink, his eyes hurt and his face is wet with salty spray. He can’t, though, his body is not his own anymore. He is tethered to it but he cannot control it. He pulls at his consciousness, imagining it like pebbles scattered across the ground and commanding them to float toward him. The pebbles bounce and skitter, piling themselves and falling over again. The pain in Kylo’s body becomes overwhelming. It’s unbearable. He feels like the chaotic blade of his saber is buried in his gut again -- hot and electric, burning off the ends of his nerves and melting closed his torn open vessels.

Slowly, his physical vision returns and it is filled with the scavenger’s face and the grey sky behind her. She gags and sobs, her hand slipping against the steel where she balances herself. The hand that was so gentle when it touched him isn’t gentle anymore. She probes deep into the wound in his gut, her fingers shifting and caressing at the severed threads of his spine and the flattened bag of his lung. She twists her hand and retches, turning away to wipe her forehead halfheartedly against her shoulder. 

She sways and looks down at her hand, the rain making streaks in the gore that clings to her fingers and palm. She looks tired -- sad and tired -- when she says, “I thought I could do it -- I thought I knew how.”

“Rey, _please_ ,” Kylo hears someone plead over the wave that crashes over them, threatening to drown Kylo where he lays. “He’s dead -- we’re _free of him_ \-- we might finally stand a chance to --”

“Finn, please,” the scavenger chokes. “There was _Light_ , I felt it. Leia felt it -- she can’t go like this, she can’t go when I know she wanted him back.”

There is a confused, distressed quality to the answer. “General Organa had hope, but she _knew_ what he was, Rey. She knew! I don’t think she wanted this --”

“Please,” the scavenger sobs, wiping snot from her lips and smearing blood across her chin. “Please just let me try. I have to try.”

It’s shocking when she pushes her fingers against his gut again. She squeezes her eyes shut and grits her teeth. Kylo can feel her body shaking and he _just_ wants to close his eyes -- to turn away from the cumbersome rain. _And then --_

They’re not his eyes, it’s not his body. He is only essence again and he can feel the deep, dark shadow of himself like noxious gas spreading out to fill up the container of the universe as it expands and expands. He waits for that exquisite _nothing_ to take hold of him, exhausted by the effort of clinging to life. It doesn’t come. Instead, he is pierced through with searing light. It’s burning him away and making him fall like ash back onto the useless flesh macerating on the wreckage of a long-dead world.

_Come back._

_There’s still light in him, I know it._

_I wanted to take your hand -- Ben’s hand._

Kylo wishes for a moment that he still had a mouth he could use so that he might use it to scream. To scare them off. To make them leave. To make them let him go. They’re free of him -- he is free of them and all they stand for. Can she not be happy?

Slowly, he settles back into his corporeal prison. First, he can feel his legs again. They’re so heavy, his boots so wet. He thinks that his feet will probably look like he’s spent too long in a hot bath. His lungs fill and he holds his breath, the sensation of his guts shifting back into place too much to bear. He blinks, finally clearing his salt-stung eyes, and tries to move his fingers. He twitches and sputters and it makes his mouth feel thick and his tongue _zing_ with the taste of stale iron.

Kylo heaves his cumbersome body over and empties himself onto the slick wreckage. He pulls himself up onto his hands and knees, trying to reorient. Everything feels akin to wearing shoes on the wrong feet or jamming hands into opposite gloves. He slips, nearly falling into his own sick, in his efforts to stand. Kef Bir, all around him -- the people, the animals, the water, the atmosphere, the mechanics -- is an assault on his senses. Everything is too raw and loud.

Behind him, someone lets out a ruined sob. Someone begs the scavenger to open her eyes, to take a breath. Kylo turns, half on his knees, and looks at her. She’s so very white, the only sanguineous hue about her the broken tissue and coagulated blood sticking in the creases of her hand. She looks with unseeing eyes toward the sky while FN-2187 -- _Finn_ \-- holds her close.

“Please,” he reasons, “Jannah’s coming around with the skimmer, we’ll get you back to their camp.”

Something deep within pulls at Kylo, tied on a string to the pathetic scene he’s watching unfold. His hand slides as he starts to rise again and he stumbles, pushed down by foreign desperation and grief bubbling up in his chest. Finn seems finally to notice him and he shifts the scavenger -- _Rey_ \-- out of his arms, easing her gently down. His face is cracked open with grief, with outrage. He leans forward, reaching out toward the saber lying uselessly feet away _and it rattles against the steel_. Finn swears in a colorful string words from worlds scattered across the galaxy and lurches forward.

Kylo acts on instinct, the autopilot in his brain throwing a wall up around himself and pushing it outward. Finn struggles against it, pushing back and reaching -- _reaching_ \-- for the saber. “No,” Kylo hisses. He doesn’t have the focus for this, for another fight that will give him nothing. He flings out a hand and the saber shoots toward him. He grips it like he intends to crush it: it’s finally his. He wavers for a moment, hoisting himself fully to his feet. All around there is sudden, terrible wind and he feels the closeness of his Knights with an intensity that he’s never experienced before.

Kylo turns and the upsilon is hovering beside the wreckage. His focus wavers and he feels Finn push even harder against his will. Something in his chest twists and reaches out and Kylo feels the strength of the Force he’s using falter before he pushes back again.

A Knight drops from the half-open ramp and scoops Kylo’s saber up reverently from where it lays forgotten at his feet. Without a second thought, Kylo follows the Knight, allowing them to assist him onto the ramp while Finn finally springs to his feet and rushes toward them. The sleek craft lifts off with the Knight pulling Kylo onto the ramp and the door slides down, sealing out Kef Bir and everyone and everything that happened there.

Kylo pauses in the loading bay, waving the Knight who assisted him away. He needs to get his bearings. Everything is topsy-turvy. His feet are unsure, like the artificial gravity on the ship has malfunctioned. With Kef Bir and all of the stormy sea and sky sealed out, Kylo can hear all of the buzzing of circuits and whooshing of engines and beeping of monitors and meters and the hissing of the air recycler.

He can hear all of the myriad of soft and loud and clashing sounds contained within his body. Beating heart, pulsing veins, firing nerves, churning gut.

The low background _scream_ that harmonizes with all of it.

It’s quiet at first, contained. But it’s pushing at everything like it’s trying to break through some barrier. Kylo imagines a great solid wall with the tiniest, thinnest fissures -- weak light leaking through.

When Kylo makes his way through the holding area and climbs the short ladder to the navigation deck, the stench of fear lays over the portal opening like a carpet over a trap door. He can feel their thoughts, hear them, taste them -- he seems not himself, he seems _touched_ by something, he seems… other. Kylo feels as if so many bugs are crawling under his skin, separating the dermis from the layers of tissue below, making it all loose like a youngling's pajamas that are just a bit too big.

They stand back out of his way, sticking to the shadows around the perimeter. They hold their breath as he passes, chests high and tight, like he might suck the life out of them along with their breath.

“Master,” someone murmurs as he slips into the cockpit and eases himself down painful and stiff into the captain’s seat. He goes through the sequences to prime the engines for hyperspace as they break through the upper atmosphere. His hands tremble like he’s coming down off of a serious dose of glitteryl and he grips the yoke tight to stop it.

“Did you complete your mission?” he asks.

They have. His faithful, competent Knights.

With the upsilon they sailed toward the deserters' camp. That’s what the little Resistance group had been, they’d found. Stormtroopers from Company 77, an infantry unit. It hadn’t been difficult to dip into the stream of their collective consciousness and find them out. They had the familiar, regimented thought patterns that all troopers trained under the Elder Hux and under Captain Phasma had. They’d mutinied and abandoned the Order on Ansett Island before finding their way to the stormy shores on Kef Bir. They’d stolen weapons and craft from the Order, supplies -- they’d stolen themselves, assets. 

At the camp, the Knights had disabled all of the craft and communications they’d found. Their operations would be crippled if they had any plans to join with the Resistance -- and if the worst happened, the scavenger and her allies would have no way to call for help or to leave the oceanic moon. Any plans they’d had to continue their movements against the Supreme Leader would be stalled.

The traitors they’d left alone. They had gathered at the shore, watching as the struggle progressed between Kylo and the scavenger. They feared if they got too close that the lookers-on would spook, that they would act against Master Ren while he was otherwise occupied. It had been best, they thought, to leave him to his personal battle and to wait to whisk him away when he’d won -- of that they’d had no doubt.

They did not speak of what they knew to be true. They let it hang there in the air between them.

Kylo nods, ending the discussion. He pulls back the yoke, lifting the upsilon higher, away from the gravitational pull of Kef Bir. Kylo considers what has changed since he departed from the _Steadfast_ , how his movements must be adjusted. He idles in the system for a moment, the engines of the upsilon humming and ready to launch into the hypnotic stream of hyperspace.

The scavenger -- their savior, their light, their new Jedi, their beacon of hope -- is dead.

General Organa -- their leader, their anchor, their guiding star, their great unifier -- is dead.

Kylo swallows down the lump of surprising grief that surges up the back of his throat. He grips the yoke hard enough to turn his fingers bloodlessly white and his knuckles a windworn red.

The Resistance will be directionless. Their judgement will be clouded by their own grief and they will scramble. They will make mistakes. Kylo will take back the Order from the shadowy control of Palpatine and Pryde and he will crush them. He will --

He will need Hux.

He will need Hux to still be alive. There had been commotion on the bridge as Kylo made his way down to the hangar. Kylo’s heart batters itself against his sternum and he reaches down, checking that the little communications unit is still safely tucked into his boot. If something happened -- if the precautions they had taken had become necessary -- Hux would have the direct connection in his possession. Kylo would contact him and would make sure there was an Order to come back to.

Kylo can feel the agitation and confusion all around him. He needs to think and his head is too crowded with _everything else_. In the midst of it all, something becomes incredibly clear -- like a ringing bell on a foggy night: Kef Bir is a moon of Endor.

Kylo smashes confidently at the control panel and sets a course to the main planet. He switches over to autopilot and abruptly abandons the captain’s chair. He takes a deep breath and addresses the Knights with the most earnest tone he can muster. “Leave me on Endor,” he says. “And continue back to the _Steadfast_ on your own.” The Knights murmur, unsure of this new directive. They’re concerned for their Master, even through the undercurrent of fear in the changes that have happened in him. “We must assume that Pryde has taken control of the fleet and that he’s carried out his plans to find and eliminate the traitor within my Council. What he does not know is that I was well aware of what was happening. General Hux was acting as a double agent to draw out the _real_ traitor -- Pryde.” The Knights are silent and attentive. “Acting under those assumptions, I must concede that Hux is dead. Pryde has no loyalty to me or to the Order. He answers to Palpatine.”

The Knights look back and forth among themselves, communicating without words. “What will you do on Endor, Master?”

“I have personal business to attend to.” Kylo feels this, knows it. He senses the planet and its lush forests pulling at him. He knows why. The Knights want to question him, they want to know why their Master, the Supreme Leader, is abandoning them for some ill-justified personal jaunt. Kylo twitches and grips the door frame outside of the cockpit, trying to control himself. “I want you to take back my ship. Ready it for my command. Take Pryde and the rest of the Supreme Council prisoner and shut down all communications. No one should leave or board the ship. No one should send or receive any signals.” Kylo begins to walk away and pauses for a moment. “Trust no one. I will rejoin you on the _Steadfast_ shortly.”

The air on Endor is clean and smooth. Breathing it is like taking a sip of cool water on the hottest summer day. The greenery is thick and heavy, untouched by humanoid life -- it doesn’t seem like there should be relics of the Empire and the Rebels, defunct bases and generators, somewhere through the tree line.

Kylo closes his eyes and breathes out slowly. With effort, he lets go of the stranglehold control that he has been laboring under and waits. Something has brought him here. Something wanted to be heard. Kylo shivers in his still-wet clothes, hoping this is not the latest of Palpatine’s manipulations. He refuses to consider the possibility that, like Hux, Kylo has just sentenced his Knights to death.

Kylo opens his mind and the forest around him is filled with ghosts. Shadows rustle the underbrush. Phantom speeders cough as their engines burn out. Animals and people scream -- sigh -- whisper -- laugh. The scent of spit-roasted food carries on the breeze. Kylo listens closer, trying to clear out all of the extraneous noise. The sound of bubbling, running water fills his head and the heady perfume of smoldering leaves and wood makes his eyes tear. He follows his senses through the trees and his path feels eerie and familiar. 

“ _Grandfather_ ,” Kylo gasps, halting in a clearing. He can see the water through the treeline, a narrow stream to be sure but appropriate to have near to a place like this, where the ritual of grief might be carried out and the tinder may be catching. “ _Lord Vader.”_

Kylo knows this place, the spot where in the year just before his own birth, Darth Vader’s body was burned in solemn funeral rites. That much he still had a shred of respect to offer Skywalker for. Kylo has been here, brought by the same for some lesson in humility and history. Kylo thinks of the relic in his suite on the _Steadfast_ , so sacred in the long journey of his life in the Force, and the Dark knowledge that Lord Vader has bestowed upon him through visions when he appeals to the relic for guidance.

Standing in the middle of the clearing, Kylo feels _hot_. The warmth presses tenderly against his face and he leans into it, pleading silently for direction.

Hoping that this isn’t a farce.

_Let me look on you with my own eyes._

Kylo’s stomach lurches, his adrenaline spiking. The voice in his head, all around him, is so familiar -- so intimately belonging to him. It can’t be Palpatine’s trickery.

_Your thoughts betray you_.

“Grandfather,” Kylo sobs, a wet bubble popping against his lips. “Please. I don’t understand what’s happened.”

_To cheat death is a power only one has achieved_.

The voice twists, a sinister tinge to the baritone. It is as familiar as it is unwelcome. Kylo’s confidence falters.

_Is it possible to learn this power?_

The voice is young and desperately hopeful. Kylo pictures himself -- pictures Ben Organa -- stealing glances at ancient, crumbling texts as he sat alone, sentenced to hours of meditation for some infraction or another. Kylo struggles to keep listening, his senses rapidly overtaken by this new _thing_ living inside him. He laughs as he stumbles through the treeline toward the water.

_...this much green in the whole galaxy._

“Stop,” Kylo hisses, teeth clenched tight. He falls to his knees at the edge of the water and leans forward, afraid to be ill, and clenches his fists in the wet soil and rotted leaves on the bank of the stream. “I didn’t ask for this,” he says breathlessly. “I didn’t _want_ this.”

_Life. Death and decay, that feeds new life._

Kylo leans over the water and stares hard at himself. The wraith that stares back at him from the crystal-clear surface is disconcerting. His skin is sallow, mottled with green-purple bruises. Kylo can’t stare down at it for long, his skin erupting in gooseflesh beneath his wet sleeves. “You should have let _go_.”

_I see through the lies. I do not fear the Dark side as --_

Kylo lurches forward and stops with his nose nearly touching the water. He glares, looking past himself toward the bottom of the stream and the glittering minerals and clever little fish. Kylo focuses on himself. He imagines himself as so many pebbles again, like the ones underneath the water. He imagines them all skittering across the ground until he is fully formed again -- of stone, of steel -- and everything is quiet. There are no voices. No phantom scents. No errant sounds or sensations. There is only the croaking of some amphibious thing and the quiet rush of the water and the wind through the trees. Kylo looks at himself and he is _changed_.

“I understand, Grandfather. Lord Vader. I know what I should do.”

The ship that he finds is ancient and outmoded just like the long-abandoned base he finds it at. It hadn’t been a long walk or a terrible effort to locate. As lush as Endor is, it is also littered with the bones of the galactic wars. Kylo laughs at the Rebellion call sign that displays on the screen when it finally powers up. There is one thing that his father gave him that will always be valuable -- the knowhow to make any hunk of junk lunch itself into the sky and how to make a single, stale tank of fuel last. 

Kylo sits in the cockpit, watching controls and screens slowly flicker to life. He realizes how foolish he was to tell his Knights to leave without him, especially with no real, reliable way to contact them if he could not find transport. While he runs the calculation in his head, trying to decide whether he has enough fuel to make the jump to hyperspace and make it back to the _Steadfast_ with no issue. He might -- it’s been a while since he’s had to figure out a flight path down to the last ounce of fuel, a while since he’s hotwired a ship -- let alone a ship held together by rust and hope -- but he thinks he might _just_ make it.

Uncertainty grips him as he watches one of the screens flicker and die. Smacking it doesn’t rattle anything out of place or into place and the screen stays dark. He curls his hand into a fist and presses it against the screen until he hears a satisfying crack. The transparisteel display spiders in a fine web toward the metal frame.

He can handle one thing at a time, he thinks. While the engine and systems continue to slowly awaken -- he has to be patient, the thing probably hasn’t gotten off the ground in thirty years -- he can find out if he has a ship to return to. The coms on this little craft don’t appear to work, and he’s not sure that the _Steadfast_ would accept the transmission even if they did.

He has his line to Hux. His precious, secret, direct line.

If Hux answers -- Kylo will know there’s a chance that Pryde has been stopped. That the cause against Palpatine’s selfish, clandestine empire and all of his decades of manipulation and lies, might not be completely lost. Kylo might be able to hold his position. He might still be able to do what his grandfather couldn’t.

Kylo leans down and unzips his boot. The communicator is still there, tucked safely into the garter around his legging. He flips the compact device open and toggles the switch on. _Nothing happens_. He shakes it, he smacks it against the edge of the control panel in front of him. An indicator light fizzles out but the communicator is defiantly silent. It must be too wet -- damn Kef Bir and the rain and the scavenger -- he takes a breath and toggles it off. He waits and pushes the little switch again. Finally, the little screen crackles to life and the image capture clicks on. Relieved, Kylo waits for Hux to appear -- Force willing.

Kylo holds his breath when the small hologram of Hux comes to life. It’s blurry, waving with static, but it’s Hux -- wearing an oxygen mask. Anxiety makes Kylo’s head buzz and he tries to greet Hux as neutrally as possible. “General. You’re alive.”

The audio when Hux answers makes him sound very far away, at the end of a hyperspace tunnel. “Mostly.”

“Things have gone to plan, then. Pryde is no wiser for his efforts. I’ve received new tracking for the ship. You’re headed in a very interesting direction.” He’s lying for Hux’s benefit. For the benefit of anyone who might be listening in. He doesn’t want them to know he’s all but stranded on Endor, he assumes that Pryde has set them on course for Exegol, for Palpatine.

“I wouldn’t know, Supreme Leader. No one delivers briefings to corpses.” His cutting humor is still intact, Kylo thinks. He himself must be more intact than the little hologram makes it seem. 

They talk in short, direct phrases. This is business, not a reunion.

Hux manages to plant a seed of doubt in Kylo’s mind -- Can he trust the Knights? Is he sure he can leave the retaking of the _Steadfast_ in their hands? They were with Snoke for longer than Kylo had known them, had knelt to a Master of Ren before him. He believes they’re loyal, he knows it in the deepest pit of himself, in his marrow and his guts.

But his marrow and his guts no longer feel like his own.

The indicator panels finally, suddenly spring to life and Kylo can feel the distinctive hum of a working ship under the soles of his boots. His focus snaps toward the controls and he’s in the air, breaking through Endor’s atmosphere just as a rain storm is beginning in the clouds below him. He cruises for several minutes, finding the flow of gravity among the bodies in the Endor system and letting it propel him toward the edge. He thinks, if he times his jump just right and lets the engines run until there’s nothing but fumes -- he’ll make it.

He only hopes the _Steadfast_ hasn’t moved.

When Kylo was young, traveling through hyperspace was his favorite thing to do. He liked to pretend that in the hypnotic lights, in the space between reality and… what lays beyond -- that he had become a part of the Force, that he was swimming in it -- surrounded by it, embraced by it. Once, with the _Falcon_ on autopilot and his parents preoccupied in the galley, Ben Organa had disengaged the artificial gravity. In the minutes he spent floating so easily just above the floor -- bathed in the blue light of hyperspace -- he’d felt _something_. He had been disallowed access to the cockpit for some time after that, banished to the habitation deck where he was watched closely by an ancient astromech in desperate need of a personality adjustment.

Now, as long as he is in hyperspace, there is hope. Possibility. Every wavelength that flows over and around and through this blessed little garbage heap brings him closer to the _Steadfast_ . To the Order. To destroying those that stand against him -- those that thought to _use_ him for their own gain.

Kylo laughs, breathless and wild, when he drops out of hyperspace and the _Steadfast_ is right where he left it. Warning lights begin to flash, alarms sounding. He’s almost completely out of fuel, running on fumes. The engines are beginning to shut down, far too hot to function properly. The syrupy-sweet scent of coolant fills the cockpit as the ship automatically begins emergency protocols. Kylo turns toward where the scent is strongest and sees a cracked, crumbling line with noxious green fluid spraying out of it.

He pushes the ship down toward the hangar bay and braces himself for the inevitable crash but the _door_ \--

Just as Kylo reconciles the fact that his path will end, after all that he has endured, smeared against the solid steel of the _Steadfast’s_ hull, the doors begin to slide open. The gravitational shield shimmers under the eerie hue of the lockdown lighting inside the hangar. His head is filled with whispers as he hurtles forward: _Master. Master. Mastermastermaster. The ship is ours. Yours. The Order. The fleet. Master_.

Kylo’s ship, just barely holding together, ricochets off of the half-open door like light through a diffraction plate. The whole thing trembles violently as it passes through the shield and the space of the hangar _screams_ and echoes with the sound of grinding steel as he lands hard and slides. Disoriented, Kylo shakes his head. He’s at the center of sudden chaos. Sparks fly as a plasma blade slices through the side of the wrecked ship. Thermal foam quickly covers the viewport and the acrid stench of electric fire dulls. Kylo lets himself be hauled out of the cockpit and carefully put down on the floor. He’s filled with a sense of the familiar. The sounds, the smells, the coolness of the steel and the sharpness of the heavily filtered and disinfected air. The ship and all its inhabitants hum around him in a tumult of order and fear and uncertainty and anger and satisfaction and confusion.

“Supreme Leader!”

A heavy hand lands on Kylo’s shoulder when he gets himself up onto his knees. He looks up into their face and he knows them. Not by name, but they’re a fixture. Always on the hangar floor, always organizing and reorganizing, directing flights and crew. Kylo can taste the fear that churns in their gut even though they manage to keep their expression neutral. They can’t meet his gaze, looking everywhere by directly at him.

“Supreme Leader, your head.”

Kylo blinks and touches the crown of his head where there is a sharp pain he is only distantly aware of. “It’s fine,” he lies and pushes himself to his feet. He scans the space, relieved to see his upsilon tucked away. He knew the Knights had taken the ship back, he’d heard them, but the visual confirmation is comforting. “The Knights of Ren?”

“Have gathered all commanding personnel to the bridge, sir.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I was ordered to stay, to anticipate your arrival.”

"Secure the doors again, no one in or out. Remain on alert -- it's not likely, but there is a possibility that we will be bracing for attack." Kylo presses his lips together -- he doesn't know whether the Resistance will pull themselves together or it will be the Order turning its fleet on him under Palpatine's command. The officer nods and steps away, an order already on his lips as he directs crew around the smoking rubble that Kylo arrived in.

Kylo focuses on putting one foot in front of the other. He slaps his palm against the access reader for the lift, his credentials overriding the total lockdown. He makes his way steadily toward the medbay though the weirdly empty corridors. He doesn’t know where Hux has been hidden away. That part is purposeful. The less they both knew once everything was truly in motion, the better. 

Kylo _needs_ Hux now. He needs someone who understands the inner workings of the Order. Someone who has been up against it like a lover in the darkest night, fingers buried in its warmest, most secret parts. Feeling and knowing. Learning. Kylo needs someone at his side who will help him cross the divide. Even if he succeeds in eliminating Pryde -- eliminating whatever poison he has infected the Order with -- destroying Palpatine and all that’s hidden away on Exegol -- the Order will never trust him. Only fear him.

He cannot maintain control on fear alone. Like the scavenger’s anger, it isn’t self-sustaining. It will turn to resentment, to bitterness.

So many years ago now, when Ben Organa was still breathing, his mother did much the same in the beginning of her investigation of the Order -- what she didn’t know quite yet was the Order. Kylo pauses for a moment, standing just outside the medbay doors. It wasn’t long after that Snoke drew Kylo completely into the fold, that the Knights of Ren came to rescue him from the stifling confines of Skywalker’s teaching. Kylo shakes his head and puts his hand against the access scanner. _Denied_.

Kylo is baffled for a moment. Have things changed so quickly between his arrival and reaching this point? Surely there would have been some indication. He would know it if his Knights had been overpowered. He wipes his hand against his tunic and tries again to no avail. The fist he makes shakes and he stops himself from acting rashly. Aurra -- of course -- the shadowy ally he and Hux made. The Chief Medical Officer. She would have locked the ward if this is where Hux is hidden. She would have secured him from the threat of Pryde’s discovery. At the very least she would have secured the medbay in response to the lockdown. There would be no override as a matter of safety for those within, even for the Supreme Leader.

There’s no time to wait patiently for admittance. Kylo waves a hand and the heavy door screeches as its wrenched from the locked position. He lets instinct guide him, listens to the Force when it tells him _this way_ and he senses the familiar tune of Hux’s thoughts. Kylo feels he’s being watched and realizes that patients who are able to leave their beds have gathered at the observation ports of their locked rooms. Kylo stops and turns, meeting the gaze of someone pressed against the transparisteel with wide eyes, the privacy curtain clutched in their hands. They shriek and back away quickly, tripping over themselves.

_Stars -- Force preserve me -- maker --_

Kylo stops at the very end of the bay. The access door is firmly locked. The decal across the outer viewport reads _Infectious Ward -- Absolutely no unauthorized admittance._ The first door is easy to open, Kylo feels primed. The second is more difficult -- the door, something more, resists his effort. He is breathing heavily through his teeth, spittle flying and sticking to the steel when it finally flies open.

And there is Hux, sitting on the bed. He looks small and frail in the anonymous scrubs he’s dressed in. He has plasto tubing wrapped around his fists, ready to strangle whoever dared come near. He looks afraid, Kylo wallows the atmosphere of it as he approaches. But the fear doesn’t diminish him, it fuels him like those last molecules of gas fume in an engine.

“Ren, you --”

“Silence,” Kylo says and it drops from his lips much more aggressively than he intended. He crosses the room to stand in front of Hux, trying to figure out what to do. Hux is hurt, he can feel it. He can hardly breathe without pain, each little shift in his body is agony. Things a broken. Bruised. Shallow bleeds have turned thick beneath the surface of his skin. Kylo feels it all like his own body has been battered and he can hardly keep the distress of it off of his face. Kylo grips at his chest like it might help relieve the pain and hears the wetness of Kef Bir squelch in his fist.

Practically, Kylo doesn’t know what to do. The Force knows, and he trusts it. It doesn’t have that specific tinge of Darkness he knows now was Snoke -- was Palpatine -- as it guides him. He lets his mind open like an airlock and he _knows_.

Kylo presses his hand to Hux’s chest and feels the impact of a blaster bolt as it lands. He feels the fissures in his ribs as the rush along the bone. He feels the tissue of his lungs compress and bleed. And then, just as strong and shocking, Kylo feels full to the brim with _energy_ \-- Dark and Light and Death and Life and Brokenness and Repair and Withering and Growth. His body _aches_. He feels stripped entirely raw from the inside, too exhausted to keep going but entirely energized and renewed…

Finally, there is nothing. Not the _nothing_ he felt before he was so cruelly forced back into the shackles of corporeal existence, but the nothingness of normalcy. All’s well. All’s better. All’s fresh and clean and proper.

Kylo shudders and exhales, _seeing_ Hux below him, sitting there on the bed still. His cheeks are flushed with color like he’s gone for a rigorous run on the springy track that circumnavigates the ship’s habitation deck. Very abruptly, Kylo’s chest _hurts_ \-- all of that pain shoved inside of himself and he wants to _give it back_. He yanks his hand away from Hux and clutches at himself, breathing through it and focusing on remaining upright.

Hux looks astonished. He touches himself, sliding his hands up beneath his scrub shirt. He pokes and prods with a look of awe painted across his features. Disbelieving, he yanks his scrub shirt up over his head and looks down at the pale, smooth swath of his chest. No injury. No damage. No pain. He fingers his ribs roughly and breathes in deeply, filling his lungs up as far as they’ll go.

Kylo reaches out with a shaking hand and brushes his fingertips across Hux’s sternum. He’s shocked. Amazed at what he’s done -- the cost of it all but forgotten when he touches Hux’s warm skin. He’s done this. Kylo, the Master of Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order.

_Ben Organa_.

The path he must follow from here to Exegol, to Palpatine, to _freedom_ seems entirely clear now. Like it has been lit by millions of tiny, bioluminescent creatures that will shepherd him toward the _end of it_.

Kylo shakes his head, blinking and remembering himself. “Get dressed,” he says to Hux. “Meet me on the bridge.”

“I have no clothes. Aurra put them down the chute. She didn’t want to leave anything to chance.” 

Of course. There couldn’t be any evidence that General Hux was still aboard the ship, still alive. Kylo glances toward the chute on the far side of the room marked _incinerator_. He nods and steps away from Hux, turning on his heel and looking away. He has to focus. “Figure it out,” he orders. “Then come to me.”

Hux’s answer -- _Yes, Supreme Leader._ \-- fills Kylo’s head in an echoing rebound as he leaves.

As Kylo makes his way from the medbay he feels too large for the corridors he’s moving through. He thinks of the fear he sensed in his Knights, the unhidden fear of those he passed in the medbay, Hux’s fear -- he needs to contain himself. He’d like to stop and strip out of his wet clothing, to dry his hair and his skin -- he’s certain his feet are peeling inside of his boots. 

He moves on muscle memory, hardly really seeing where he goes, hardly noticing the few people he passes as they flatten themselves against walls and into doorways to avoid interrupting his forward momentum. He hardly notices how they gasp and whisper. He doesn’t have the capacity to make them forget, to turn away.

Kylo strides through his suite with purpose. His helmet is where he left it, sitting on his bed beside the rumpled mess of his old cowl. He picks the fabric up and holds it to his face, breathing in the smell of it and feeling the thick weave of the fibers against his skin. Were that what he planned to do was as simple and intuitive as things had been before he’d killed Snoke -- before the trust between he and Hux had been so badly damaged -- before the scavenger and the deserting trooper -- before _Starkiller_ and Hosnian Prime… when he was still just a weapon to be pointed and used.

Kylo puts the helmet on and it feels both _right_ and _not right_. Snoke’s insults echo through his mind. The boy in the mask, hiding the weaknesses of his blood behind it. But he needs it now, he reasons with himself. He needs the crew to trust him, to listen to him. He needs them not to see whatever it is he has become. Not until he understands it better.

Settling the helmet into place, Kylo pulls up the hood of his cape. The water has collected in the fabric where the flow of gravity has had the easiest pull and it _thwaps_ against the steel dome. He will only look comical, he decides, as water drips across his visor. He swipes at it with the hem of his rumpled sleep shirt from the bed and thinks of another helmet with a melted, twisted visor and a gaping, horrific mouth. He wonders if maybe the voice he has heard for so long when he focuses his energy on the relic was not his grandfather, after all. If -- _no._ If there is not time to be properly attired there is not time to think of such things.

The bridge is wrested in chaos when he arrives. The Knights surround the Supreme Council at the front of the space, all neatly in binders and corralled together -- disarmed, Kylo notes, their blasters destroyed on the floor in the middle of the gangway. The officers and commanders that the Knights have assembled fill the space like little fish in a can, all talking too loudly to try to be heard above the others.

Kylo stops in front of the disabled weapons and raises a hand. He closes his fist and the bridge falls silent. He kicks the junk at his feet away and it slides over the edge of the gangway to fall with a clatter on the floor of the workstations. He scans the room and there are familiar faces here -- survivors of _Starkiller_ , crew from the _Finalizer_. He thinks he has the majority, as mixed as the crowd is.

The Knights push the Council into a neat line in front of them to stand at judgement. To their credit, they’re quiet. They don’t shout, they don’t argue. They stand with chins up and chests out. There is an air of confidence about them, as if they are confident that they will be released, that this is all an overreaction that will be resolved in due course.

Kylo intones their names, all rank and respect, one by one. Pryde -- Gross -- Engell -- Parnadee -- Quinn. He explains that Pryde has been found to be guilty of treason, among other crimes against the First Order and the Supreme Leader. He explains that Pryde has been informing on their movements, has been stealing resources and funneling them to an unknown party. That he has been undermining the Supreme Leader’s efforts, the Order’s efforts. Kylo explains that each of the others are just as guilty as Pryde -- that their complacence, their cooperation, and their collusion -- whether willing or forced -- is an equal crime to his.

“Your disloyalty is an _insult_ . I raised you all to the highest position any among the Order’s command might hope to attain -- to sit on my council, to advise me, to guide the Order into _glorious victory_ over the Resistance and the last vestiges of the Republic."

The council-prisoners remain silent, almost defiant. Anxiety builds among those assembled on the bridge, packed in behind workstations and on the outer walkways. A lockdown alarm _whoops_ and a smooth feminine voice reminds the ship that everyone is to remain calm and follow orders. The lights strobe and turn steady again.

“Have you no argument?” Kylo asks them. “No denial? No innocent plea? _This_ is your trial. _I_ am your judge and jury.”

“And who will be the executioner?” Pryde asks quietly, a snide curl to his lip.

A Knight steps forward behind Pryde. Kylo’s quiet Monk with their ghastly mask, brings the end of their ax’s handle down firmly on the floor.

“We’ll see,” Kylo whispers through his vocoder.

The assembly on the bridge has entirely lost its voice. Not a murmur passes among them. The viscous pull of their building fear flows around them, threatening to drown Kylo. He walks around his gaggle of mutineers to take his place at the front of the bridge, flanked tightly by his Knights. He closes his eyes, glad for his helmet, and rests his hands on his hips beneath the shelter or his cape. His fingers find the familiar surfaces of his saber, fitting into well-worn grooves in the metal casing. His other hand seeks out the foreign planes of his grandfather’s blade. He will make it just as familiar. It will be just as much an extension of himself as the blade he built himself.

When his business here is concluded, Kylo thinks while he watches a bead of sweat slide under Pryde’s collar, he will go to Palpatine. _He will finish what Lord Vader started._ Kylo knows that he can win. That he _will_ win. He has things that Vader did not have -- could not dream of.

Kylo is pulled from his reverie when the assembly on the bridge gasps and Hux’s steps ring out against the polished surface of the gangway. They cover their mouths and clutch at their collars in shock.

“This is _impossible_ ,” Pryde snarls as Hux strides toward the front of the bridge. He struggles against his bonds and leans forward as if to rush the risen General.

“Impossible only for a small mind,” Hux snipes. He is a waith, illuminated by the emergency lights and the workstation screens and shrouded in the silence all around. His pale face is like the moon, reflecting the lights against the high points of his cheeks and nose and lips -- and receding into the shadow in the valleys of his eyes.

Kylo makes a decision then, looking at this man who will stop at nothing to get what he believes is his destiny. He’ll secure Hux’s hard-won loyalty. “Grand Marshall Hux,” Kylo addresses. Hux’s attention snaps into focus on Kylo, his gaze flicking toward his face behind the mask -- searching out his eyes behind the dark visor. “These officers have been stripped of their rank and sentenced for treason. I would like you to carry it out.”

“It would be my honor, Supreme Leader.” Hux lays his hand gently on the grip of the blaster holstered on his belt. With a practiced motion, he flicks the strap open and slides the weapon from its seat. He rests his thumb along the side, pressing his fingerpad to the discrete scanner above the stop. “To serve you -- and the First Order.”

Pryde protests loudly as he’s forced to his knees by a Knight. “This is an _outrage_ ,” he spits as Hux steps closer, looming over him like a monolith cut from alabaster. 

_Oh_ , Kylo thinks, how a traitor’s tune changes when faced with the immediate reality of his fate.

“I have committed no crimes! I have never betrayed the Order!” He jerks hard, wrenching his shoulders from the Knight’s grip to turn and snarl at Kylo. You are nothing more than a pawn in a larger game -- I answer to one _higher than_ either of --”

Pryde doesn’t finish his empty threat. With a steady hand and a cold expression, Hux lifts his blaster and fires.

There is a long, slow heartbeat of shocked quiet on the bridge. “Lieutenant Mitaka,” Kylo says, breaking the tension. “Notify janitorial that there is trash to be cleaned off the bridge. The incinerator will do.”

“Yes, sir!” Mitaka jumps to attention to execute the order. He nods along with Kylo’s requests as he fires transmissions across the ship from his datapad to clean the bridge and to summon the Supreme Leader’s personal squadron to remove the rest of the prisoners.

Hux holsters his blaster with care and shoves at Pryde’s crumpled body with his shiny boot. Kylo stares at the empty husk. It’s surprisingly clean, very little blood has oozed from the wound. Ever conscious of utility, Hux hadn’t set the blaster very high -- the shot not through. Kylo imagines that Pryde’s traitorous head is filling up with wet darkness, taking over all the crevices where Palpatine lived, where he was puppeteered from.

Hux steps up to Kylo to stand beside him, the pair of them turning to look out over the expanse of realspace outside of the viewport. The Knights begin to clear the bridge, moving anyone non-essential along back to their duties. Somewhere in the hall beyond the bridge, Kylo can hear the distinctive click of troopers’ boots approaching. The sound is deeply satisfying -- the sound of his will being obeyed.

Subtly, Hux touches Kylo’s elbow. His hand slips down toward Kylo’s wrist and covers his own where it rests against the edge of the control panel they are standing before. “Grand Marshall,” Kylo orders softly, testing. “Set a course to Exegol and notify the fleet that the full force of the Order is needed.”

Hux purses his lips, only a little confused. He doesn’t question Kylo’s request. He puts out his hand and an earcom materializes in his palm without a need to ask for one -- Mitaka ever the vigilant lieutenant. Hux fixes it in place and shifts down to the screen on the control panel just a pace away.

“Hailing all First Order craft, this is _Grand Marshall Armitage Hux_ ,” he begins.

The lockdown alarms quiet and the main lights flicker to life once more when Kylo keys in access codes and presses his palm to scanners for confirmation. He can feel the hum of the _Steadfast’s_ engines beneath his feet as they begin to prime. Mitaka continues to carry out a steady stream of orders while Hux communicates with the fleet, bringing normalcy back to the ship. In an unsteady, halting way, the bridge returns to its usual state of activity. A trooper clears the Council’s destroyed weapons from the floor so that a nav officer might take their seat at their workstation and key in the coordinates that Hux has set and plot their route.

The bridge functions like it had never stopped, seamlessly busy. Kylo leaves his place at the front of the bridge and makes a steady path back down the gangway and into the hall. He needs to prepare. He needs to figure out how to explain to Hux -- explain to the Order -- what is waiting for them on Exegol. Kylo moves through the corridors aimlessly, sweeping past crew trying to figure out who should be on shift, who should be at what post. A transport overtakes him as he circles around again, an irregular lump covered with a tarp in the back.

Kylo is startled when a body appears beside him, radiating warmth and nervous energy. 

“Supreme Leader,” Hux says with a measure of reverence. “We need to have a conversation.”

They do, although Kylo isn’t sure what to say. He is still decidedly damp -- he is uncomfortable and cold, his skin is chafing. He cannot organize his thoughts enough to respond with more than a nod and to follow where Hux leads him. They walk a distance from the main circuit of corridors that join with the hall outside of the bridge and Hux pulls him aside. He presses a code into the security panel on the door they have stopped at and it slides open.

Inside is a massive computing array -- rows upon rows of servers and data stations and banks of screens. There are air vents every few feet, pumping cool air into the room that fans help to circulate around all of the buzzing, humming equipment. BB-units roll around through the aisles monitoring it all, sometimes connecting into a hub and then quickly rushing over to another. There isn’t another organic being in sight and Kylo suspects that unless there is some major malfunction, there never is.

“Supreme Leader,” Hux starts. He clears his throat and says, quietly and with purpose, “ _Kylo_.”

“Yes, General. Where would you like to start?”

“I’d like to start by looking you in the eye.” Hux settles with his hands folded behind his back and his chest forward. “I need to know it was real.”

Is it? Was it? Kylo thinks for a moment that perhaps this is just his suffocating brain piecing together random pieces of information -- memories and dreams and fantasies -- into one final act. But Hux is unmoved by his hesitation. Kylo sighs and reaches up to press the releases on his helmet. The faceshield slides forward and he lifts it over his head. He looks down at it for a moment before he puts his arm out to the side and drops it. It _clangs_ against the floor and a pair of BB-units turn toward the sound. If they could make facial expressions, Kylo is sure they would look offended.

Hux’s jaw tightens, his teeth clenching. He tries to keep his expression steady, Kylo can tell how hard he’s trying to maintain his composure. He can hardly keep his own, Hux’s effort is commendable.

“It was real then. I thought that I was hallucinating.” Hux’s hands appear from behind his back again and he reaches up for a halting moment and puts them back down again. He purses his lips and his brow comes together and Kylo nearly laughs. Hux touches the high points of his cheeks, thumbs brushing gently against flesh stretched over bone. His fingers sink into Kylo’s hair and Kylo imagines he can feel the shiny grime of it coating Hux’s skin. Hux studies Kylo like an insect under a magnifier until he feels humiliated enough to turn away, jerking his face out of Hux’s hands. “What happened to you?”

“The girl, she --” Kylo looks down between them and Hux gestures tentatively to the ragged hole in his tunic. The obvious hangs between them, unspoken and tense like a lift cable. “Organa… Organa pulled a dirty trick and paid dearly for it. She got what she wanted.” Kylo sucks in a shuddering breath. “The girl saw her chance and took it -- and everything was nothing,” he finishes in a whisper. Hux’s eyes shine and his forehead creases with stress. “And then,” Kylo breathes and shakes his head. “I don’t know. I was… dragged back. Shoved back into my own head.”

Hux is holding his breath while Kylo speaks. He lets it out in a rush and it’s hot on Kylo’s face in a way that makes him realize how cold he’s grown. “And the girl?” he whispers feverishly. “The deserter? The _fucking_ pilot?” He sucks in a breath, "The tech with the _teeth_?" he spits.

“The girl is dead,” Kylo croaks. “Unless there is someone left to do to her what she did to me.” His gut turns over as he says it and he swallows hard. He thinks of the way Eight-Sev _Finn_ reached for his grandfather’s saber. “She’ll no longer be an obstacle.”

Hux is breathing hard. His eyes search Kylo’s face and the notch in his throat bobs wildly with halted speech. Hux lifts a trembling hand to his own chest. “And what you did? _What_ did you -- _how_?” 

Kylo shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he breathes. “I don’t know.”

The acrid, too-familiar taste of fear floods Kylo’s mouth. It’s like sucking on a copper wire, the sharp end of it jabbing at the thin shells of his teeth. It’s tinged with determination; with a stubborn, corrosive drive to control and channel it. Kylo swallows it down and it _burns_.

“ _Ren_ ,” Hux snarls. “What have you done?”

Kylo jerks forward, teeth bared and hands planted against Hux’s chest. He shoves and Hux hits the blinking, buzzing tower of tech he is standing in front of. A BB-unit glides over and beeps in an angry tone, bumping Kylo’s heel with its round body. Kylo shifts to bar Hux against the computing pillar with his forearm and flicks a wrist carelessly behind himself. The BB-unit screeches in distress as it flies across the floor, narrowly missing the edge of another tower.

“I did what I had to,” Kylo snaps back. “Should I have left you there suffering? Drowning under the pressure of your own _weak_ husk? Hidden. Locked away. Useless. Or do you prefer to take your place at my side -- in the _victory_ we’re headed for?”

Hux grits his teeth and pushes back, his fingers hooked into the hole Kylo’s own saber left behind, knuckles pressed so hard into Kylo that sharp pain shoots toward his spine. There is a small, almost imperceptible tearing sound as Hux pulls him forward again. Their foreheads smack together and their teeth clack. Kylo thinks for a moment that Hux intends to rip him apart.

“You need me,” Hux rasps against Kylo’s mouth. He shifts his fingers and his nails dig into Kylo’s Force-new flesh. “They won’t trust you with the Council in binders -- with Pryde no more than a cloud of dust dumped out of the waste-lock. The _fleet_ won’t follow you.”

Kylo cranes his neck back to look at Hux. He is vaguely aware of the continued irritation of the droids, how they order caution and banishment from the room in turn in urgent binary. He jerks his arm hard and Hux slams hard into the tower again. Some alarm sounds for slow seconds while a BB-unit glides over and links into an override panel. The tower behind Hux goes dark, the lights behind the shiny casing cutting out. Kylo glances over Hux’s shoulder at his own reflection in the dark, mirrored surface. He shoves Hux again, gently. “Then I made the right choice.”

Hux’s cheeks flush with color and his lips curl in disgust. “I thought it was the end. That Pryde won. Stole everything. When I was told that you left so suddenly -- I wasn’t sure you were going to come back.” Hux cranes forward over Kylo’s arm, jutting his chin forward. “And if that was the case… I _hoped_ you’d die.”

Hux sputters and chokes when Kylo kisses him then, shoving their mouths together. It may have been surprise, outrage. It may have been how Kylo’s arm slipped.

Kylo loses sense of who is grabbing -- pushing -- pulling -- whose nails are digging crescent moons into skin -- yanking hair and clothing. It’s entirely Kylo -- or Hux -- and somehow the wiring from every system around them lashing out and taking their ounce.

Kylo’s cape falls from his shoulders, ripped from its stays, and hits the floor with a dull, dense sound. He presses himself into Hux, relishing the sensation of teeth grinding against his earlobe. It’s been so long, he thinks, since trust existed between them. Since they’d been in close quarters for another more than planning clandestine actions against Pryde.

He’ll take what he can get.

This isn’t _trust_ , he knows. And even if he didn’t, he can feel the guarded energy of Hux holding everything so close. This is something else.

Hux grunts, struggling between two unforgiving, immobile surfaces. He grapples with the damp bulk of Kylo’s clothing, finally sighing in frustration and letting his body sag. Kylo shifts and bends, shoving his arms behind Hux and hoisting him upward. Hux makes a sound of indignation but follows Kylo’s intent just the same. He lifts his legs, wrapping them awkwardly around Kylo, making small, distressed huffs when he jars the sabers still hanging from Kylo’s belt.

So close, all of Kylo’s most base senses are assaulted. He can feel the softness of Hux’s skin against his cheek and the the waxy scent of his hair. He can smell the stale wetness of himself, the sweat and the salt. He can feel the way his clothes chafe against every sensitive bit of skin he has and the smoothness of Hux’s uniform.

Displeased, Hux squirms and wrenches a leg downward. “No,” he grunts. “This doesn’t -- “ 

Hux shuffles his feet and shoves a knee between Kylo’s legs. It feels _nice_ to be touched this way. Handled. It’s not the tentative gentleness or the invasive violence of the scavenger. It’s not the cruelty of Snoke. It’s not the guarded, calculated affection of Skywalker or Organa or Solo. Kylo braces one arm against the tower behind Hux, his sleeve slipping against the smooth surface of the cover before he catches himself. He insinuates a hand between them, clumsily seeking out the shape of Hux’s cock tucked so neatly into his standard issue underwear. Hux breathes out like he’s relieved and jerks his knee like it’s some sort of kind permission to rub himself silly. Kylo almost laughs at the sheer normalcy of it.

Hux breathes in and out in short little huffs, letting Kylo grope between his legs. His guard falls and Kylo can feel the shape of his thoughts, sense memories flooding his mind and filling the tight space between their bodies. Kylo feels the environment of his mind and the catalogue of locations and partners and how their hands felt, their bodies -- how the smelled, tasted -- the soft or sharpness of surfaces -- the cramping in his legs and his arms -- the  _ zing _ of sitting down days after a partner who’d been less than gentle. Hux makes quiet sounds, a discrete habit learned in supply closets and offices he didn’t belong in. 

It feels like Kylo’s mind has been hijacked by the data chip full of porn he’d kept hidden under his mattress half a lifetime ago. He lets it take him -- that nervous, excited flutter in his chest. It’s tinged with desperation and a foolish fear of discovery like he’s back at a long lost family home -- in the little stone structure that he’d call home at the temple -- hidden under his blanket with his hands slicked with spit. He shifts, pressing himself up against Hux and resting his sweaty forehead against the transparisteel behind him. Kylo starts an awkward dance, his hand between Hux’s legs and his own hips against Hux’s long, steel-cabled thigh moving in an erratic dissonance.

Kylo watches himself, nose-to-nose with his reflection, studying the image. His face is no longer his own, his eyes no longer familiar. Once dark and soft and doe-ish, utter betrayal built into his own skull, now they flash with something strange in their deep, bruise-blushed sockets. They are like metal, like light. Molten and hot. Kylo shudders out a heavy breath and fogs the transparisteel.

Hux groans openly, wanton with his cock hard in his pants in Kylo’s hand. “ _ Supreme Leader _ ,” he rasps and presses his leg harder into Kylo’s body. “I cannot command the fleet if I do not know where we’re going -- who we’re attacking. You cannot leave me in the dark. What is on Exegol?”

Kylo turns away from his reflection, buries his face in the curve of Hux’s neck. He breathes deep and slows the stuttering pace of his hips. “ _ Fate _ is on Exegol. Life or death.”

“Do not speak in riddles,” Hux hisses. He covers Kylo’s hand with his own, shifting and pressing. “I cannot command with riddles.”

“Palpatine,” Kylo breathes. “Darth Sidious lives, however much of a wretched half-life that it may be.”

“Im-- _ ha _ \--imposs _ ible _ .”

“Not so with the Force -- even if I don’t understand it. Look at me -- at  _ us _ .”

“And that is who Pryde betrayed us to?”

Kylo jerks his hips and breathes, gasping like a fish while he struggles to keep some modicum of control. “Yes. To Palpatine --  _ Snoke _ … the Sith…  _ the Final Order _ .”

Hux laughs openly in a gulping grimace. “Relics of a failed empire all collecting together, all sucked toward the same black hole.” He gets a hand into Kylo’s hair and pulls, forcing Kylo to look him in the eye. He holds his breath, eyes darting across Kylo’s face and Kylo can hear his thoughts clear as bells in a temple:  _ Corrupt. Wrong. Rot. Dark. Living death. _

It makes sense to Kylo then, all that has happened since his mother strong-armed her way into his head to lead him to his fate -- what the ghosts of Endor were trying to say.  _ Dominion over death _ . Vader had begged for it, pleaded. Had been denied. Had been made to suffer at Sidious’ right hand -- had ben denied the full width and breadth of his power and kept in a state worse than death -- barely human any longer, just enough to channel the Force for Palpatine’s degenerate machinations.

Hux sucks in air through his teeth and shove’s Kylo’s face toward his. He presses their foreheads together painfully, hissing and spraying Kylo’s lips with spittle. “He’s obsolete,” Hux growls. “He won’t take what’s mine --  _ ours --  _ all that I’ve worked for -- all of my life.” Hux speaks right against Kylo’s mouth, moving their hands together now and distracting Kylo from any drive of his own. “We’ll raze the planet if we must -- destroy it all.”

There is suddenly only  _ red _ . It glows and burns and tinges Hux’s climax with a weird sort of mourning. He shrieks in discomfort, Kylo’s hand clutching too hard. Somewhere there is a BB-unit beeping in alarm. It all disappears down the hyperspace tunnel of his consciousness and the only thing that he knows is the feel of his own chafed skin as he ruts until his heart flops in his chest and his lungs feel deflated and flat. When he drops back into realspace his jaw is seized in a silent scream against Hux’s cheek and he feels each hair that rips from his scalp in Hux’s vice grip.

“And when it’s finished,” Hux sobs. “When all of it is gone -- crushed beneath our heels --” Hux doesn’t finish his thought. His body sags with relief when Kylo finds the misfire of his nerves and stiffly backs away. Hux doubles over, one had braced against his knee and the other clutched protectively between his legs. “It’ll be a few hours at least,” he finally croaks and looks up at Kylo through the gold and copper fan of his eyelashes and watches him trip over the heap of his sodden cape on the floor. He watches the sabers on Kylo’s belt sway and clatter as he regains his footing. “Mitaka can handle the bridge. We’ll both need to prepare.”

Chest heaving, Hux straightens himself and stands. He snaps his fingers in an annoyed fashion and a BB rushes over to restart the server process that they’d interrupted.

Hux pauses at the door and Kylo wonders if somehow he too can feel the Knight loitering in the hall on the other side, their agitated energy burning through whatever else was hanging in a cloud over Kylo and his new Grand Marshall. Kylo raises a brow before his face vanishes behind his helmet again.

“I almost wish Pryde had managed to reach Exegol somehow. I’d like the pleasure of shooting him down again.” Hux smirks and stands back while the door slides open.

Kylo has so much, he thinks and watches Hux nod in unsurprised acknowledgement to the Knight outside, such a fierce machine. The engines are so well primed -- ready to fire and finally end the entire revolting, generations-long pantomime.

**Author's Note:**

>  **MCD:** When Rey is healing Kylo after their battle on Kef Bir, he is very much ready to die and has come to terms with it. He's comfortable becoming part of the Force and she essentially forces him back into his body. While she's doing this, she goes too far and gives him the entirety of her life-force resulting in her own death. This is brief and non-graphic with regard to Rey.
> 
> **Gore/Body Horror:** Rather than a gentle touch and a face of concentration in order to bring Kylo back from the wound she has given him, Rey gets much more hands on. She reaches into the wound in attempt to use the Force to heal the extensive damage that she's done by putting a saber through his body, including damage to his spine, his lungs, and his general guts. In Kylo's journey back into his body there are descriptions of what he can feel. There is some nauseous reaction to the healing on Kylo's part. Beyond that there are descriptions of the changes in Kylo's appearance as a result of what has essentially been corruption by the Force, including but not limited to changes in his physical appearance described similar to old bruising. Kylo describes in a few places how his body feels weird and different and ill-fitting. The process of healing Hux's injuries from Pryde's attack are described at least minimally. Kylo ponders the state of Pryde's body after he's been dealt with.
> 
> **All of the above are, in the author's opinion, more poetic/visceral than directly gory.**
> 
> Please do comment!


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